Tag Archives: street

Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Construction Zone

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Construction Zone
A man walks past construction barriers in San Francisco

Construction Zone. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A man walks past construction barriers in San Francisco.

Like most big cities, San Francisco is in a perpetual state of construction, demolition, and reconstruction. It is fun to imagine a city that arrives in a perfect state and stays there for a while — but that’s not going to happen. Among many San Francisco projects, one of the biggest right now involves constructing an underground transit route under the center of the City, and years of torn up streets have ensued. Although it is possible to imagine the project concluding now, there’s still a lot of work going on.

One major purpose of the route is to extend transit in a more effective manner from the Caltrain station at Fourth and Townsend. I frequently travel to the City by way of the train, and this visit was no exception, so I found myself walking straight up Fourth and past a section where the rails are above ground before they descend into a tunnel. Here the ongoing construction is separated by barriers from the (few) remaining traffic lanes.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Travel, Photographs: Urban/Street

Woman At The Wall

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Woman At The Wall
A woman at the Berlin Wall, East Side Gallery

Woman At The Wall. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A woman at the Berlin Wall, East Side Gallery.

We were in Berlin for a few days last summer, as one stop on our 40-day sojourn through (mostly) Europe. Our routine is mostly to travel light — carryon only — and to walk a lot in every city we visit. In fact, once we arrive in a city, with few exceptions we either walk or occasionally take public transit to get where we want to go. In Berlin it was entirely a matter of walking.

On this day our walking loop took us past the East Side Gallery which, despite the name, is one of the few remaining sections of the old Berlin Wall. It became a sort of outdoor gallery when artists took over sections of the wall and created a wild display of street art. I wanted to photograph some of the work, but I didn’t want to just come back with photographs of someone else’s art so I decided to look for coincidences and juxtapositions between the images on the wall and the people who passed by.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

Wet Sidewalk, Shadows

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Wet Sidewalk, Shadows
Shadows and a man walking on a wet sidewalk, San Francisco

Wet Sidewalk, Shadows. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Shadows and a man walking on a wet sidewalk, San Francisco.

Street photographs come about in all sorts of ways. Quite often my approach is to locate an “urban landscape” composition and then wait for people to populate it. Sometimes I photograph without people in the scene at all. On other occasions the person may be the triggering subject, and instead of finding a person to fill the landscape I try to find a landscape to build around the person. In other photographs the primary objects may by colors or geometry. And often it all happens so quickly that there is almost no time to contemplate before making the photograph — do it now or it is gone.

This photograph brings a few of these threads together. It was most certainly one of those “no time to contemplate” photographs. As I walked down this street I realized that the sidewalk held both reflecting water and the angles of shadows. (Every time I see something like this I remember a particular winter photograph I made in New York City a few years back.) Both I and the subject were in motion, walking along this sidewalk in the direction of the Caltrain station, so almost without breaking step I raised the camera and managed to get one frame.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Germany, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Windows, Oblique Light

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Windows, Oblique Light
The shadows of windows in oblique lighting on a Berlin building

Windows, Oblique Light. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The shadows of windows in oblique lighting on a Berlin building.

You might regard this as “what happens when they let landscape photographers do street photography.” For me, street photography combines a bunch of possible components — the human element, the crystallization of a “moment,” the light and color and patterns, and the nature of urban landscape. I do think of the urban scene as a landscape, and in some ways — though not all! — I approach it that way. (Depending on how far you want to go with that thought… it does have “valleys,” and “faces,” and “peaks,” and even flora and wildlife.)

We had spent the day walking through parts of Berlin, starting at our hotel a way off from the central city, heading past the East Side Gallery area of the Wall, then walking back toward the central area of the Brandenburg Gate. As we got closer to this center we improvised a route that did not take the largest, most popular streets, and it a few places we ended up in rather non-touristy spots. I’d have to go back and consult a map to see precisely where this was photographed, but I was intrigued by the minimalist quality of the architecture, the shadows cast by the protruding window frames, and the contrast between the warm red-brown tones of the wall and the cool blue tones of the windows — and even a resonance with the landscapes of the American Southwest.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.